Instruction Procedure

After identifying speaking strategies used by students through pre-test application, a short-term strategy training course was applied to the experimental group with the primary

objective of creating strategy-based situations which make students familiar with the speaking strategies as well as communication. Depending on what is desired, the design also included the following purposes: (1) raising awareness with respect to students’ views of language learning; their understanding of speaking strategies; their use of strategies; sharing

responsibility in their own learning; (2) enabling students to have a repertoire of speaking strategies; (3) building up confidence and willingness as a consequence of experimenting with the language. It was based on the integration of explicit strategy instruction in the foreign language programme and carried out by the researcher. On the other hand, while both groups were taught within the framework of the English language programme on a weekly basis, the differences appeared in the teaching approach, activities and materials for the experimental group only as a result of the integration of strategy training sessions. The experimental group received strategy training in a different classroom allotted particularly to this group which we called “strategy classroom”. All teaching and strategy training experiences were provided in this classroom throughout the study. The intervention including instruction and practice sessions took for two hours a week, which adds up to 7-week training sessions in total.

Bearing in mind the classroom reality which revealed the gap between the curriculum

objectives and the teacher’s instructional practices strongly at the beginning of the term, the students’ age, proficiency level, skills and needs were taken into consideration in the

preparation of the weekly plans. The activities were designed with regard to speaking skill, and the strategies to be taught were structured around the related units/themes in the ELTP (2013) (see Appendix 1 for the example lesson plan). Besides, the lesson plans were prepared in advance on the grounds of CALLA- “Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach”

by the researcher and checked by the supervisor of the study. The intervention included the instruction of the following speaking strategies which were chosen from the strategy set on the “Children’s Speaking Strategy Use Survey” according to their teachability particularly by taking into account the children’s characteristics, the context and what appeared in pre-treatment observation processes. Depending on the strategy type and the subject of the week some of the strategies’ instructions were provided together in one teaching session, which can be seen in the study schedule (see Appendix 2).

1. I often review newly learned vocabulary or expressions by repeatedly mouthing.

2. I use a new vocabulary in a sentence while speaking English to pronounce it correctly.

3. I produce the sounds of the language until I can say them well.

4. When I have trouble in explaining meaning of an unknown word, I draw its picture.

5. When I have trouble in explaining meaning of things in English, I use my body language or gestures.

6. When I can’t find an expression or a word in English, I ask for help.

7. While speaking if I do not know how to make a sentence to express what I mean, I ask for help.

8. Whenever I am stressed by the idea of speaking English, I try to relax myself.

9. I look for opportunities to speak English in the classroom.

In this study, the strategy instruction followed the stages of CALLA instructional design developed by Chamot and O’Malley (1994), which composed of a five-step cycle for

preparation, presentation, practice, evaluation, expansion, as it is shown in Figure 2. The stages of CALLA design are not always required to be followed in a strict sequence but stages are often used recursively as the need arises (Chamot, 2001).

• Preparation: This stage was used by the researcher as a way of raising awareness with regard to what students already know and which strategies they already use. This stage was important for a smooth transition to the next stage. It is because students’ preparation for the activity ahead was provided by activating their prior knowledge along with previewing the pre-determined strategy to be introduced in the lesson. This stage was also used as a way to make them interested in the lesson.

• Presentation: This stage was to develop students’ knowledge about the strategies. The new strategy was introduced/modeled through an activity in a contextualized way and some questions were asked to activate the students’ selective attention, inference and/or imagery strategies so that they were able to identify the embedded strategy used by the researcher.

Then, the researcher explicitly named the strategy and provided rationale for strategy use by explaining how, when and where to use this strategy. Visual aids related to the instructed strategy and its written forms for the strategies in the form of chunks were also presented to the students.

As visual aids contribute to the creation of context in the classroom (Wright, 1989), they were provided in the form of wall pictures and wall charts associated with the targeted strategies. The reason for using the visual aids was to make the strategic components more comprehensive, memorable as well as more interesting to the students as recommended by Porter and Margaret (1992). Based on the cognitive theory that language learning is a complex process, the contribution of visual aids for stimulating this processes seems

undeniable. Such benefit is also valid for “formulaic units”, in other name “chunks”.

Formulaic units which stored and extracted as a whole are used as a means to meet the communication needs when language learners are short in linguistic competence (Wei &

Ying, 2011). According to Wei and Ying (2011) what make children enter into

communication with language beyond their current linguistic knowledge are the formulaic units. Considering the fact that children in our study have insufficient linguistic sources and practice opportunities, we made use of chunks to provide support for them in learning the language.

• The practice stage. Developing students’ skill in use of presented strategy was aimed in this stage. Therefore, students were provided ample opportunities to practice the newly learned strategies through communication-based activities. They were encouraged both linguistically and affectively to complete the activities prepared for the use of relevant strategy, which often included pair work.

• The evaluation stage. In this stage, students were asked to evaluate their own learning, based on their use of newly learned strategy just after the training session. To that end, minute papers were used to let them write their thoughts about the strategies in L1 although they were not willing so much to do this. In my opinion, this stage was the heart of training, because fostering their self-monitoring was important for the sake of opening doors to their

independence. I would say that every opportunity for their reflectivity was rather like “a fishhook catching insights like a fish”.

• The expansion stage: This stage is used to develop the transfer of strategies to new tasks or different conditions. Since it was difficult for us to monitor how they apply these strategies across different environments or school subjects, this stage was not resorted often in terms of strategy transfer among different contexts. However, there were some recorded moments or occasions in which some students were able to transfer their strategy use outside the

classroom, which gave us some clues about the effectiveness of strategy learning as claimed by Oxford (1990). Therefore, this stage was used mainly to trace the employment of speaking strategies till the end of the training programme. For this reason, additional activities were provided, through which the students strengthen the repertoire of strategies based on their preferences. Students were continuously motivated and supported to make use of the strategies from their repertoire.

Figure 2

CALLA-FL Instructional Sequence (Chamot & Robbins, 2006, p. 14)